Comments on: why studytimes (now studynation) will fare better than competition

By: ankur

ankur — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:44:14 +0000

Definitely dude…all the best…!

By: Rohit

Rohit — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:41:38 +0000

Ankur – Thanks for the appreciation too. We at PaGaLGuY take lot of efforts to delight our clients as well as our users with our services and hence it concerned me. We are rewarded by good word of mouth from the users and by majority of our clients doing business with us again.

Keep in touch, and let me know if I can be of any help.You know where to find me. :)

Cheers,
Rohit

By: ankur

ankur — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:38:58 +0000

Hey Rohit…thanks for the kind words…!

Hope your clients come back to you…am sure you guys are doing your bit. Fantastic work on Pagalguy btw…love the site…

By: Rohit

Rohit — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:34:53 +0000

@Ankur – Firstly congratulations for studytimes. Wish you guys best of the luck.

@vineet – Rohit from PaGaLGuY.com here. I checked with our Sales team and as far as I know, the analytics has been shared proactively by our team and there have been no issues between us and Avinash, who has been interacting with us on behalf of Pearl School of Business. Feel free to contact us in case you have any doubts and I would love to solve them. We share analytics with all our clients as a standard practice and PSB is no exception. :)
Cheers,
Rohit

By: ankur

ankur — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:19:12 +0000

@Abhishek: Its funny you say this…because each time we all sit down and try and figure what something should be like…we always end up stating “lets not go with what we think works…we do not represent the internet population of india”. I couldnt agree more with you there Abhishek…but its surprising that this did not reflect in my post. Honestly, its always at the back of my mind…but thanks for reiterating…

@Umang – thanks dude…glad you liked it

@Yogesh – the intent was definitely not to undermine the competition..because as you rightly pointed out..we are too new to do so. We have nothing to show right now but I am happy we have taken steps in the right direction to change what the competition has not done right. We are behind the learning curve so there is no question of ridiculing the likes of Shiksha. But honestly, knowing where Shiksha comes from..I wish it had things in a better fashion. We are new and have a lot to learn…and thats the only way we can hope to even come close to where we want to be. No denying that
And hey…you sure you searched for the same keyword. I found results..and mighty good ones – http://www.studytimes.com/topic/Social-Entrepreneurship

By: Yogesh

Yogesh — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:54:44 +0000

Doing things differently and taking pride in doing so is alright. Boasting, specially without doing enough research puts one in bad light. And I think the same will be the result of this post.
btw, I searched for “Social Entrepreneurship” on StudyTimes and Shiksha. StudyTimes could not find even one college from its claimed database of over 25000 colleges. Shiksha did give me a few relevant results. I am not undermining StudyPlaces in comparison to Shiksha. StudyTimes is new and will take time to evolve. What I did not like in this post is the way the competition has been ridiculed. Top players will have some bad and some good things about them. Key is to have an attitude of learning. Having said that, I really liked the effort StudyTimes has put in to understand the fine details of the domain and address the concerns of its users. All the best to Ankur and his team.

By: Umang

Umang — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:41:07 +0000

Really liked the post – was quite comprehensive and the examples were great

By: College why studytimes will fare better than competition | India Colleges

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By: abhishek shah

abhishek shah — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:45:29 +0000

Ankur – while i agree to your views and love your passion – execution is really the key – being the first mover is actually irrelevant – but i see shades of “i like it so user will like it” – thats not how internet works so avoid making your decisons on your own experience as a user – hope you get my point

rest am sure studytimes is not an innovator but will do the same things differently and in a much better way – and will win – cheers

By: ankur

ankur — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:40:01 +0000

Thanks for the kind words Vineet

My views on your pain areas:
1. Its surprising that analytics around banner ad spend were not shared with you. Ofcourse click fraud is something that Indian sites still hvnt come to terms with…

2. I would anyday get someone else to do our content…and we to act only as a mediator. It works for both parties. The client gets his marketing content and the site gets fantastic content.

3. Its a little early for that Vineet. Its definitely on our agenda but penetrating the Tier2/3 colleges takes time…! Apply here is a sham…just another way of getting students to convert as leads. We will hopefully change that…

Thanks again

By: vineet

vineet — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:19:48 +0000

Excellent post. Wish you all the best for studytimes.

Couple of observations from my side from a different perspective. While doing online marketing for Pearl School of Business we looked at partnering with almost all study related social networks – bharatstudent, minglebox, shiksha, careeravenues, pagalguy.. etc etc.. the biggest disappointments have been:

- No analytics around the banner ad spend. We couldn’t understand how many views and clicks came on the pagalguy banner and hence decided to to discontinue the payments.

- Inflexible around ‘official content’… Only half the sites were willing to make corrections to outdated and wrong content about the institute.

- the biggest pain in tier 2 – 3 management institutes is admissions this year. Can study times provide some features/ products to help that pain point? Some have tried ‘apply here’.. but it’s quite buggy and again, not measurable.